Less than a year into her term, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has pulled off a feat her predecessor failed to accomplish for two years running: publish a functional, streamlined Free Application for Federal Student Aid by Oct. 1.
What Secretary Miguel Cardona could not do in three years, McMahon did in nine months, with half the staff, and against the backdrop of a government shutdown.
Filling out the FAFSA is a bureaucratic rite of passage that nearly every college student must complete once a year. Without it, students cannot access any federal student aid, including federal loans, Pell grants, and Parent PLUS loans.
Completing the FAFSA should be easy and uneventful. Congress acknowledged this in 2020, when it directed the Department of Education to shrink the number of questions and streamline the formula for calculating aid eligibility by Oct. 1, 2023.
The original deadline came and went without a new FAFSA, and without a FAFSA at all. Fixated on unlawfully canceling student loans rather than legally administering them, the prior administration delivered a glitchy, broken FAFSA three months behind schedule.
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